Thrasybulus (pronounced /ˌθræsɨˈbjuːləs/; Ancient Greek: Θρασύβουλος 'brave-willed';
d. 388 BC) was an Atheniangeneral and
democratic leader. In
411 BC, in the wake of an oligarchic coup at Athens, the pro-democracy
sailors at Samos
elected him as a general, making him a primary leader of the
successful democratic resistance to that coup. As general, he was
responsible for recalling the controversial nobleman Alcibiades from exile,
and the two worked together extensively over the next several
years. In 411 and 410, Thrasybulus commanded along with Alcibiades
and others at several critical Athenian naval victories.

After Athens' defeat in the Peloponnesian War, Thrasybulus led
the democratic resistance to the new oligarchic government, known
as the Thirty
Tyrants, that the victorious Spartans imposed on Athens. In 404 BC, he
commanded a small force of exiles that invaded Attica and, in successive battles, defeated
first a Spartan garrison and then the forces of the oligarchy. In
the wake of these victories, democracy was re-established at
Athens. As a leader of this revived democracy in the 4th century
BC, Thrasybulus advocated a policy of resistance to Sparta and
sought to restore Athens' imperial power. He was killed in 388 BC
while leading an Athenian naval force during the Corinthian
War.

Contents

Personal life and early
career

Almost nothing is known of Thrasybulus's background or early
life. His father was named Lycus,[1] and he
was a native of the deme of
Steiria in Athens.[2] He was
probably born between 455 and 441 BC, although a date as late as
the late 430s BC cannot be ruled out. He was married, and had two
children. Several facts make it clear that he was from a wealthy
family; he held the office of trierarch,[3] which
involved significant personal expenditures, on several occasions,
and in the fourth century his son was able to pay a substantial
fine of 10 talents.[4]

By 411 BC, Thrasybulus was clearly established to some degree as
a pro-democracy politician, as events discussed below make clear.
He is not mentioned in any sources before 411, so it is impossible
to present a picture of his actions.

As a politician, Thrasybulus consistently advocated several
policies throughout his career. He was an advocate of Athenian
imperialism and expansionism, and a strong supporter of Periclean democracy. He seems
to have been an unspectacular public speaker, although Plutarch
notes that he had "the loudest voice of the Athenians."[5] During
his period of prominence within the democracy, he seems to have led
what might now be termed a populist faction.[6]

Coup of 411
BC

In 413 BC, a massive Athenian expedition force was
completely obliterated in Sicily. In the wake of this defeat, Athens found
itself facing a crisis of unprecedented magnitude. Cities
throughout its Aegean
empire began to rebel, and a Peloponnesian fleet sailed to assist
them. Seeking to contain the crisis, Athens tapped its reserve fund
to rebuild its fleet and dispatched what ships it had to establish
an advance naval base at Samos.

In this general atmosphere of crisis, aristocrats at Athens who had long
desired to overthrow the democracy there began to agitate publicly
for a change of government, and formed a conspiracy to bring an oligarchy to power in
Athens. Their plans included recalling Alcibiades, who had been exiled by the
democratic government. These oligarchs initiated their plans at
Samos, where they successfully encouraged a number of Samian
oligarchs to begin a similar conspiracy.[7]

A dispute has arisen among modern historians over Thrasybulus'
involvement in this plot. Donald Kagan has suggested that
Thrasybulus was one of the founding members of the scheme and was
willing to support moderate oligarchy, but was alienated by the
extreme actions taken by the plotters.[8] R.J.
Buck, on the other hand, maintains that Thrasybulus was probably
never involved in the plot, possibly because he was absent from
Samos at the time of its inception.[9]

Upon their return to Athens, the conspirators succeeded in
ending democratic rule and imposing an oligarchy of 400 rulers. At
Samos, however, the coup did not go forward so smoothly. Samian
democrats learned of the conspiracy and notified four prominent
Athenians, the generals Leon and Diomedon, Thrasybulus, and Thrasyllus, at that time
a hoplite in the ranks. With
the support of these men and the Athenian soldiers in general, the
Samian democrats were able to defeat the conspirators when they
attempted to seize power.[7]

A ship was dispatched to Athens to notify the city of this
success against the oligarchs. Upon its arrival, however, the crew
was arrested, as the news of a democratic victory was far from
welcome to the new oligarchic government. Learning of this, the
army at Samos deposed its generals and elected new generals who
were believed to be more steadfast in their support of democracy,
Thrasybulus and Thrasyllus among them. The army, stating that they
had not revolted from the city but that the city had revolted from
them, resolved to stand by the democracy while continuing to
prosecute the war against Sparta.[10]

One of the first actions Thrasybulus took as general was to
bring about the recall of Alcibiades, a policy that he had
supported since before the coup. After persuading the sailors to
support his plan, Thrasybulus sailed to retrieve Alcibiades and
returned with him to Samos. The aim of this policy was to win away
Persian support from the Spartans, as it
was believed that Alcibiades had great influence with Tissaphernes.
Alcibiades was elected as general alongside Thrasybulus and the
others.[11]
Shortly after this, following the revolt of Euboea, the government of the 400 at Athens was
overthrown and replaced by a broader oligarchy, which would
eventually give way to democracy.[12]

In
command

In the months following these events, Thrasybulus commanded the
Athenian fleet in several major engagements. At the Battle of
Cynossema, he commanded one wing of the fleet and prevented
Athenian defeat by extending his flank to prevent encirclement; the
battle ended in Athenian victory.[13]
Shortly afterwards Thrasybulus again commanded a wing of the
Athenian fleet at Abydos, another Athenian victory.[14]

The Athenian strategy at Cyzicus. Left: Alcibiades' decoy
force (blue) lures the Spartan fleet (black) out to sea.
Right: Thrasybulus and Theramenes bring their squadrons in
behind the Spartans to cut off their retreat towards Cyzicus, while
Alcibiades turns to face the pursuing force.

Thrasybulus was again in command of a squadron of the Athenian
fleet at the Battle of Cyzicus, a stunning
Athenian victory. In this battle, the Athenians drew the Spartan
fleet out to pursue a small force led by Alcibiades; when the
Spartans had gotten a good distance from land, two squadrons under
the command of Thrasybulus and Theramenes appeared in their rear to cut off
their retreat. The Spartans were forced to flee to a nearby beach,
where Alcibiades landed his men in an attempt to seize the Spartan
ships. The Spartans, however, with the assistance of a Persian
army, began to drive this Athenian force into the sea; seeing this,
Thrasybulus landed his own force to temporarily relieve pressure on
Alcibiades, and meanwhile ordered Theramenes to join up with
Athenian land forces nearby and bring them to reinforce the sailors
and marines on the beach. The Spartans and Persians, overwhelmed by
the arrival of multiple forces from several directions, were
defeated and driven off, and the Athenians captured all the Spartan
ships which were not destroyed.[15]

In 409 and 408, Thrasybulus remained in command, but his actions
are difficult to trace. He appears to have spent much of the time
campaigning in Thrace,
recapturing cities for the empire and restoring the flow of tribute
from the region. In 407 BC, he was in command of a fleet sent to
besiege Phocaea; this siege
had to be lifted, however, after the Spartans under Lysander defeated the main
Athenian fleet at Notium. This defeat led to the
downfall and exile of Alcibiades. Thrasybulus was either removed
from command on the spot by Alcibiades or not reelected at the end
of his term; either way, he was out of office from then until the
end of the war.[16]

Thrasybulus did return to action, however, at the Battle of
Arginusae in 406 BC. There, he was a trierarch in the Athenian
relief fleet sent out to assist the admiral Conon, who was blockaded at Mytilene. That battle was a major Athenian
victory; after the battle, the generals in charge took the majority
of their ships to attack the Peloponnesian fleet blockading Conon, leaving behind a force under
Thrasybulus and his fellow trierarch Theramenes to rescue the survivors. This
operation was thwarted, however, by a sudden storm which drove the
rescue force to land, and a great number of Athenians—estimates as
to the precise figure have ranged from near 1,000 to as many as
5,000—drowned.[17] The
result was one of the great Athenian political scandals of the war,
which culminated in a vicious debate between Theramenes and the
generals at Athens over who was to blame for the disaster, after
which the generals were executed. Thrasybulus, for unknown reasons,
seems to have had very little involvement in this debate.[18]

The Thirty
Tyrants

In 404 BC, following a defeat at the Battle
of Aegospotami, Athens was forced to surrender, ending the
Peloponnesian War. In the wake of this surrender, the Spartan navarchLysander imposed a strict oligarchic
government on Athens, which came to be known as the Thirty Tyrants.
This government executed a number of citizens and deprived all but
a few of their rights, eventually growing so extreme that even the
moderate oligarch Theramenes fell afoul of the government and
was executed. Fearing for their lives, numerous Athenians fled to
Thebes.[19]

Thrasybulus had been one of the first to oppose the oligarchy
and had been exiled to Thebes shortly after its rise to power.[20]
There, he was welcomed and supported by the Theban leader Ismenias and his followers,
who assisted him in preparing for a return to Athens. In 403 BC, he
led a party of 70 exiles to seize Phyle, a defensible location on
the border of Attica and Boeotia. A storm prevented the forces of
the Thirty from expelling him immediately, and numerous exiles
flocked to join him. When the Spartan garrison of Athens, supported
by Athenian cavalry, was sent out to oppose him, Thrasybulus led
his force, now 700 strong, in a surprise daybreak raid on their
camp, killing 120 Spartans and putting the rest to flight.

Five days later, Thrasybulus led his force, which had already
grown to the point that he could leave 200 men at Phyle while
taking 1,000 with him, to Piraeus, the port of Athens. There, he
fortified the Munychia, a hill that dominated the port, and awaited
the coming attack. The forces of the Thirty, supported by the
Spartan garrison, marched to Piraeus to attack him. Thrasybulus and
his men were outnumbered 5 to 1, but held a superior position and
presumably benefited from consternation amidst the ranks of the
oligarchs. In the battle, the exiles put the oligarchic forces to
flight, killing Critias, the
leader of the Thirty.[21]

After this victory, the remainder of the Thirty fled to Eleusis,
and the oligarchs within Athens began squabbling amongst
themselves. New leaders were selected, but were unable to deal with
Thrasybulus, and were forced to send to Sparta for help. From
Sparta, however, came not the aggressive Lysander, but the more
conservative Pausanias.
Pausanias' force narrowly defeated Thrasybulus' men, but only with
great effort, and, unwilling to push the issue, he arranged a
settlement between the forces of Thrasybulus and the oligarchs in
the city. Democracy was restored, while those oligarchs who wished
to do so withdrew to Eleusis.[22] In
power, Thrasybulus pushed through a law which pardoned all but a
few of the oligarchs, preventing a brutal reprisal by the
victorious democrats. For his actions, Thrasybulus was awarded an
olive crown by his countrymen.[20]

Later
actions

In the revived democracy established in 403 BC, Thrasybulus
became a major and prestigious leader, although he was soon
superseded at the head of the state by Archinus. Thrasybulus seems to have advocated
a more radically democratic policy than the populace was willing to
accept at the time; he called for reinstating pay for political
service, and sought to extend citizenship to all the metics and
foreigners who had fought alongside him against the Thirty. He was
initially cautious about offending Sparta, but, when Persian
support became available at the start of the Corinthian War,
he became an advocate of aggressive action, and about this time
seems to have regained his preeminence in Athenian politics. He
initiated the rebuilding of the long walls, which had
been demolished at the end of the Peloponnesian War, and commanded
the Athenian contingents at Nemea and Coronea; these two defeats,
however, damaged his political stature, and he was replaced at the
head of the state by Conon,
whose victory at Cnidus had ended Sparta's dreams of
naval empire.[23]

Thrasybulus largely faded from view for several years as Conon
led the Athenian fleet to a series of victories, but in 392 BC
Conon was imprisoned by the Persian satrap Tiribazus while attending a peace conference
at Sardis; although released,
he died in Cyprus without
returning to Athens. Thrasybulus, leading the faction that sought
to reject the peace offer, regained his position atop Athenian
politics. In 389 BC, he led a force of triremes to levy tribute from cities around the
Aegean and support Rhodes,
where a democratic government was struggling against Sparta. On
this campaign, Thrasybulus relaid much of the framework for an
Athenian empire on the fifth century model; he captured Byzantium,
imposed a duty on ships passing through the Hellespont, and collected tribute from many
of the islands of the Aegean.[24] In
388 BC, as he led his fleet South through the Aegean, his soldiers
ravaged the fields of Aspendus. In retaliation, the Aspendians
raided the Athenian camp by night; Thrasybulus was killed in his
tent.[25]

The gains that Thrasybulus made on this campaign were soon
reversed, however, by Persian intervention. Alarmed by the sudden
reappearance of something resembling the Athenian empire that had
driven them from the Aegean in the fifth century, the Persians
began supporting Sparta, and a Persian fleet was soon in the
Hellespont, threatening Athens' grain supply. Peace was quickly
concluded, on the same terms that the Athenians had rejected in
392; Thrasybulus' campaigns, though impressively successful in
spreading Athenian influence, had little long-term effect, since
they prompted Persia to force the Athenians to give up what they
had gained.[26]

Historical
opinions

Thrasybulus has been widely recognized as a successful military
commander. Most of the major ancient historians assigned credit for
the dramatic Athenian victories of 411 BC to Alcibiades, but a few,
such as Cornelius Nepos, pointed to the
decisive role that was played in these battles by Thrasybulus. More
recent historians, such as Donald Kagan and R.J. Buck, have tended to
support this analysis, pointing to the role that Thrasybulus played
in crafting Athenian strategy in all these battles, and
specifically to the decisive action he took at Cyzicus, which saved
Alcibiades's force from being swamped, and turned a potential
Athenian defeat into a stunning victory.[27][28] R.J.
Buck has suggested that Thrasybulus suffered from an
"anti-democratic tradition of ancient historiography," which led
many writers to minimize the accomplishments of one of democracy's
strongest advocates.[29]

Throughout his career, Thrasybulus defended democracy at Athens
against its opponents. He was one of the few prominent citizens
whom the Samians trusted to defend their democracy, and whom the
fleet selected to lead it through the troubled time of conflict
with the 400. Later, in his opposition to the Thirty Tyrants,
Thrasybulus risked his life when few others would, and his actions
were responsible for the quick restoration of democracy. In the
words of Cornelius Nepos,

“

This most noble action,
then, is entirely Thrasybulus's; for when the Thirty Tyrants,
appointed by the Lacedaemonians, kept Athens oppressed in a state
of slavery, and had partly banished from their country, and partly
put to death, a great number of the citizens whom fortune had
spared in the war, and had divided their confiscated property among
themselves, he was not only the first, but the only man at the
commencement, to declare war against them.[20]

”

John Fine points to the clemency shown by Thrasybulus and other
democrats in the wake of their victory over the Thirty as a key
contribution towards reestablishing stable government in Athens.
While many city-states throughout the Greek world broke down into
vicious cycles of civil war and reprisal, Athens remained united
and democratic, without interruption, until near the end of the
third century, and democracy, albeit interrupted several times by
conquest or revolution, continued there until Roman times, several
centuries later.[30]

Thus Thrasybulus won praise as an Athenian patriot and staunch,
principled democrat. He has been criticized by modern historians,
however, for failing to recognize that Athens in the 4th century could
not sustain an imperial policy.[31] R.J.
Buck suggests that Thrasybulus, who came of age in the heady days
when the democracy and empire under Pericles were at their fullest extent, never
accepted that the devastating losses Athens had suffered in the
Peloponnesian War made the return of those times impossible.[32]

Thrasybulus was a capable general, particularly successful in
naval warfare, and a competent speaker, but was frequently
overshadowed or pushed aside by more charismatic or spectacularly
successful leaders. Buck has compared him to Winston Churchill,
another advocate of imperial policies who held fast to his beliefs
after the tide of history had turned against him, and who rose to
his peak of prominence at his country's darkest hour. Throughout
his two decades of prominence, whether in or out of leadership,
Thrasybulus remained a steady advocate of traditional Athenian
imperial democracy, and he died fighting for the same cause he was
advocating on his first appearance in 411.

From LoveToKnow 1911

THRASYBULUS, an Athenian general, whose public
career began in 411 B.C., when by his resolute behaviour he
frustrated the oligarchic rising in Samos (see Peloponnesian War), and secured the
Athenian armament to the cause of democracy. Elected general by the troops, he
effected the recall of Alcibiades and assisted him in the ensuing
naval campaigns. By his brave defence at Cynossema (41 I) he won
the battle for Athens, and in
410 contributed towards the brilliant victory of Cyzicus. In 406 he fought at Arginusae as a
simple ship's captain, but after the engagement was commissioned
with Theramenes to rescue some drowning crews. In the
subsequent inquiry Thrasybulus successfully disclaimed
responsibility for the failure.

In 404, when exiled by the Thirty Tyrants for his services to
the democracy, he retired to Thebes and there prepared for a desperate
attempt to recover his country. Late in the year, with seventy men,
he seized Phyle, a hill fort on
Mt Parnes. A force sent by the Thirty was repulsed and routed by a
surprise attack. Thrasybulus now gained the Peiraeus, 1000 strong, and successfully held
the steep hill of Munychia against the oligarchs' full force. After
this repulse the Thirty gave way to a provisional government of
moderate oligarchs. Meanwhile a Spartan fleet, which the latter had
summoned, blockaded the Peiraeus, but king Pausanias, commanding .the land forces, after
some skirmishes effected a general reconciliation by which the
democracy was restored (October 403). Thrasybulus was now the hero
of the people; but a decree by
which he secured the franchise for all his followers, including
many slaves, was rescinded as illegal.

In 395 Thrasybulus induced Athens to join the Theban league
against Sparta, but did not
himself take the field till 389, when he led a new fleet of 40
ships against the Spartans at Rhodes. Sailing first to the Bosporus he effected a democratic revolution
at Byzantium and renewed
the corn-toll. After a successful descent on Lesbos and the renewal of the
5')/ o import tax at Thasos
and Clazomenae he
sailed south in quest of further contributions, but met his death
in a night surprise by the people of Aspendus. By his exactions he had forfeited
the confidence both of the allies and of Athens; but after his
death the ill-feeling subsided, and he was ever remembered as one
of the saviours of his country.